


Survivors

by Scriblit



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Torture, Panic Attacks, So much angst, Survivors Guilt, friends being there for each other, post first contact fallout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 16:03:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21200351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scriblit/pseuds/Scriblit
Summary: Out of all the things to do. Out of all the people to do it to.In the week after the Borg attacked, boarded their ship, killed or assimilated scores of their colleagues and tortured one of their family, the crew try to heal, but it's plainly obvious to them all that things are still very, very wrong.





	1. What Happened In Engineering? / The Guy Who Makes The Ship Go

**Author's Note:**

> The Picard trailers have got me thinking a lot more about First Contact and the way things were left, although to be fair, I already think about what went down in First Contact and the way things were left, a lot. These vignettes contain a lot of little headcanons & so on that I have about where the characters' headspaces might have been at that point. TW for 'off screen' capture & torture, and I've always viewed Data/Borg Queen as non-con due to the whole prisoner situation. It's referenced rather than explicitly described but TW for that too.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will can tell something's wrong the moment he beams aboard that something's wrong on the ship.
> 
> Geordi will let himself fall apart later. For now, he has to stand at the heart of the Borg's assault on his workplace and his best friend, and get them all back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I put these two first chapters together because they're very short. Might have played a little fast & loose with how Team Having Fun On Earth find out about what had happened on the ship, considering what high spirits they're in on they meeting back up with the others in the canon.

**What Happened In Engineering?**

It was wrong, from the moment they beamed back aboard. It was all wrong. It didn’t take an empath to tell that. He could feel it radiating off Deanna. Hell – he could feel it for himself. It _smelled_ wrong.

Worf was there. His expression… This was all wrong. 

‘What happened?’ That was Geordi. He could tell, too. ‘What happened, did something go wrong? Something you couldn’t tell us about on Earth?’

Worf opened his mouth for a moment, then rethought what he was about to say.

Shit.

Worf was trying to be diplomatic. Shit, this was really bad.

‘We didn’t want to ruin an historic moment, or alarm any more of the 21st Century people than was necessary,’ managed the Klingon. It’s better to brief you while you follow me. We need to get out of here. Now.’ He shot Geordi an honest to goodness apologetic glance.

This was _really_ bad.

‘All available crew have been diverted to Engineering,’ he added. ‘You will need them.’

‘What happened in Engineering?’

‘The Borg,’ said Deanna, quietly. The colour had drained from her face. ‘They got in. They…’

His own breath hitched. ‘They’re here? They boarded us? Are they still…’

‘They have been dealt with,’ Worf told them. ‘It’s over.’

That was something, at least.

But he’d missed it.

He’d been off playing space cowboy with Cochrane, while the Borg had slithered onto his ship, and done goodness knows what to it, and assimilated or straight up killed goodness knows how many of the crew, the crew who looked up to him, whom he had responsibility for, and he had missed… and, wait, oh no, there was more. The look on Worf’s face. There was something else. Something terrible. Something personal.  
‘What happened in Engineering?’ repeated Geordi, his question still unanswered.

‘It became their… base… nest??’ Worf seems unsure. ‘And… there have been significant alterations made. And significant damage created while eliminating them. Some of it is… You may find some of it distressing.’

Will passed a couple of crewmen. They looked ashen, bereft. ‘How many crew?’

‘We’re still not sure. So far, twenty-seven have been identified amongst the dead. We believe that number will rise.’

Shit.

‘Were they…?’

‘Assimilated first. Yes.’

_Shit. _

‘There’s something else,’ said Deanna, still in that quiet voice. ‘Worf, tell us.’

‘He’s going to be all right,’ replied Worf, hurriedly, cryptically. ‘He was able to resist the assimilation process, which is a considerable feat, but…’

‘The Captain. But he seemed fine…’

‘Not the Captain.’ They had reached the turbolift. Worf lowered his tone, as if what he was about to say was shameful. ‘They took Data. The Captain got him back, but they had him for hours. Alive. Awake.’

‘What did they do?’ asked Geordi, his voice flat.

The Klingon kept his eyes and his voice down. ‘Nothing good.’

**The Guy Who Makes The Ship Go**

When there was an emergency, you just had to put your head down and get on with it. Everyone knew that when they signed up for Starfleet. Geordi knew that. He was the guy who made the ship go. No matter the circumstances. No matter if he was… hard to tell, right now, but at least a dozen engineers down, probably more. He would write eulogies for them later, and grieve for them later, but right now, they all needed to get back to their own time, and he was the guy who made the ship go. No matter that Engineering was a mess of smashed up machinery, both Starfleet and Borg, you just ripped out the bits that were stopping the ship from going, replaced them as best as you could with whatever you could lay your hands on at short notice and carried on. They’d limp into a spacedock once they were back, take time to get it properly fixed up so that none of the replacement parts were being temporarily held in place with actual chewing gum any more, but right now, none of that mattered as long as he could make the ship go.

There were bodies. Skeletons, really. They’d been pushed to one side. There was no time to move them. They’d used to be Human and Romulan and Vulcan and Klingon and… and some races he didn’t even recognize, but when they’d died, they’d all been Borg. He would help identify the ones he could, when they had time. He’d help give them all a dignified funeral, because they’d all been someone’s darling once. When he had time. But right now, he needed to make the ship go.

There was a… _thing_, in the middle of Engineering. In the middle of _his_ workspace, and he had to ignore it, he had to ignore it, but he knew what the electromagnetic cuffs must have been for. He knew what sort of strength they would have been designed to withstand.

Alive, and awake, for hours.

Alive, and awake, for _hours_.

And he had missed it all. When they’d killed his crew. When they’d tortured his friend. He’d been on Earth, with his hero, having the best time.

His implants could make out dried fluids on the thing, and he knew what they were. The thing about Data was, all the fluid running through him was the same. Blood and tears. Same stuff.

Bits of his hair. Bits of his skin. Geordi’s implants saw them all.

Alive, and awake, for hours.

There was an android eye on the floor. What was left of it, at least. It was crushed, unusable.

Geordi had to ignore it, for now. They had to get out of here. He was the guy who made the ship go. He was going to make the ship go. And then… and then… he didn’t know. He wanted to rip the whole place apart with his bare hands, for all the good that would do. He didn’t know what to do.

Yes, he did.

He was going to make the ship go.


	2. Like A Pirate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr Crusher deals with a patient, and turns down an offer.

**Like A Pirate**

‘One bit of good news; we were able to get through to the Daystrom Institute.’

Polite silence was the only reply.

‘Everything’s fine over there, the Borg passed them by, just with everything in disarray right now it’ll be a few days until somebody’s able to get to us.’

More polite silence.

‘We can’t create new skin for you here, I’m so sorry, we just don’t have the equipment.’

This was true, and only half of it. Sickbay was over capacity. People were on the emergency cots. They still had half the Defiant’s crew to patch up before organizing some sort of transport back to Deep Space Nine, and there were other injured now, besides. And all of this with only about half of sickbay in operation. The Borg had made a mess of it after Beverly had led the frantic escape. At least two of her nurses were dead.

‘Dr Crusher?’ asked one of the people on a bed behind her. She half turned, painting a thin bedside manner onto her face. It was one of the Defiant survivors. She couldn’t remember his name. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment, I’m just seeing to this patient.’

She turned back. He was still just sitting there, a ruined arm folded across his torso. A mutilated face gazing blankly at some mysterious point beyond her.

‘So,’ she continued, ‘it’ll be a short wait before we can fix your arm and most of your face.’ She paused, letting him absorb that before getting on to the worse news. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to take them much longer to build you a new eye. It’s a complicated part to recreate. Could take a month or two. There is one alternative that could mean you having a replacement eye as quickly as new skin…’

‘No,’ said Data, quietly. It was the first thing Beverly had heard him say since he had sat down. ‘No stripping Lore for spare parts. I was very clear.’

‘Humans used to donate organs all the time after death, back in the old days’ attempted Beverly, ‘even eyes…’

‘You have met Lore. It would not have been in his nature to consent to donating me an eye. Even after death.’

He met her gaze, for a moment, and for a moment, there he was – the Data that Beverly knew. Just for a flash. And then he cast his remaining eye down, and he was gone again.

‘He deserves that dignity,’ continued Data, his arms tight around his torso. ‘This is not his fault.’

‘Of course,’ replied Beverly, as gently as she could. She regretted bringing up Lore, as she always did on the few occasions he had come up since Data had got the emotion chip. She tried to be understanding, really she did, but it always grated on her that Data seemed, in spite of everything, to retain genuine affection towards that grotesque, genocidal maniac. ‘Well, you have options, until they build you a new one. The primary option is extremely old school though, I’m afraid.’

She showed him the “option”.

‘An eye patch,’ he muttered.

‘You’ll look like a pirate,’ she told him, as cheerfully as she could.

‘I do not wish to look like a pirate.’

‘I’m sorry. Nobody will judge you if you don’t wear it, just you might feel more self conscious without it.’

Data nodded, naked circuits winking with lights. He took the eye patch from her hand.

‘I do feel self conscious,’ he admitted in a tiny voice.

‘Still haven’t managed to find a way to switch your emotions off again, huh?’

A slight shake of the head. ‘It was a particularly virulent override programme. They wanted to be certain that I…’

He stopped, suddenly, leaving the obvious unsaid.

They wanted to be certain that he felt everything they were doing to him. They wanted to be certain that their victim felt fear, and shame, and horror, when they drilled into his head and flayed his arm and face.

And the rest. And the rest. There were injuries that couldn’t be explained away with their attempts to extract a code or assimilate him. Intimate injuries. Upsetting injuries that she wasn’t going to discuss with him until he was ready, and he most certainly wasn’t ready for that yet.

‘I shall find a way to shut it down or circumvent it in time,’ he said, seemingly more for his sake than hers. ‘You have a lot of patients to attend to, Doctor.’ 

And with that, he took the eye patch and left her sickbay: his usual, poker straight stance gone, replaced with an unfamiliar hunched up posture. No longer guileless and open, this was somebody creating layers of protection around himself. Arms tucked around his middle, shoulders tense, face cast down. This was somebody who had been tortured, _and the rest, and the rest,_ and was still in the process of coming apart over it.

She sent a quick message to Deanna. As if she didn’t know. As if she wasn’t already making him a priority, but Beverly felt it was the least she could do. In normal circumstances she would pass her concerns about the mental wellbeing of a patient in that sort of state on to Deanna in a flash. It was nobody’s fault that both she and Deanna were already inundated.

‘Dr Crusher,’ said the patient from the Defiant again.

Beverly forced the professionally polite expression back on to her face. ‘Yes? How are those grafts doing?’

‘Oh, great!’ The patient showed her his hands, now almost completely healed. ‘I just… I never got the chance to say thank you.’

Beverly shrugged. ‘Just doing my job.’

‘Not for my hands, for… you know. Yesterday. When they came. You saved us all.’

‘Oh. Well, that was just me doing my job too, in a way. I’m supposed to keep you alive and well, and a visit from the Borg isn’t going to help with that.’

‘Still, though.’ The patient paused. ‘I wanted to say, we all really appreciated it. We talked it over, and we’re putting you forward for the Blue Crest.’

‘What?’

‘Wing!’ A second Defiant Officer slapped his arm. ‘Way to give the surprise away!’

‘I don’t deserve a medal for yesterday.’

‘We looked it up, you exceed every criteria for it.’ Wing paused, watching her reaction, a hint of anxiety creeping in to his tone. ‘It’s… specifically for acts of courage in medical care during combat situations or disasters, and…’

‘I know what it is!’

‘You… don’t already have one, do you?’

‘No! And I don’t… I don’t _want_ a medal for yesterday.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because…’ She floundered for the words. Because she didn’t deserve it. Because so many were dead. Because so many had been left to suffer, in ways that were beyond her means to help. Because her friend had come to her with half his face cut off and his spirit ripped out _and the rest_, and all she’d been able to do for him had been to give him an eye patch like she was some sawbones on the high seas.

‘Because,’ she managed, eventually, ‘there is nothing about yesterday worth celebrating.’


	3. A Very, Very, Very Bad Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deanna takes the time to make a house call.

**A Very, Very, Very Bad Day**

‘You seem fatigued, Counsellor.’

Deanna smiled. She was exhausted. In all, 53 of the Enterprise’s crew had died as a result of the Borg’s invasion. Almost all had first been assimilated. Add this to all the friends, family and former crewmates on other ships, who had perished in the preceding battle… It was safe to say that everybody on board the Enterprise right now was reeling with grief and survivor’s guilt, having just lost somebody dear to them. It was a lot for Deanna to deal with, all at the same time. 

And, she had her own grief and guilt to deal with. She’d known every one of those 53 dead. She’d sat with them, talked them through their issues, felt their minds struggle towards a sense of wellbeing, and now they were all gone. And she hadn’t been there. She’d been on Earth, getting drunk. She hadn’t felt them go. She should have been there, she could have helped.

If she’d been there, she’d have told them, she’d have sent them back to get him. She’d have felt him. She could have said, ‘he isn’t lost, he isn’t dead, they’re keeping him alive, we need to rescue him, they’re torturing him.’

She hadn’t been there. And now she was left with the pieces.

‘Would you care for some refreshment?’ He didn’t look at her.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

She was sitting on the floor of Data’s quarters, because that was where she had found him. He had the excuse of the cat already in his lap, but Deanna suspected that he had already been sitting there before Spot had taken up the opportunity for a fuss. She was glad of the cat, at least. Spot calmed him, and gave him something to focus on.

‘I was not aware that you were in the habit of making house calls.’

‘I thought I’d swing by. I’ve been in my office for ten hours straight – I needed a change of scene.’ It wasn’t exactly a lie. ‘Besides, your quarters have the added bonus of therapy cat already thrown in.’

She briefly considered reaching across to stroke Spot between the ears, but the cat was on Data’s thighs, and from what she could gather, it would be a very bad idea to intrude on his personal space like that now.

Data still didn’t look at her, choosing to concentrate on Spot, instead. ‘I have been putting more thought towards retiring her. I am sure many quiet civilian households would be pleased to rehome her.’

‘No,’ protested Deanna, softly. ‘She loves it here, I can tell.’

‘She is getting old. She has already survived multiple battles; turning into a reptile; the crashing of the Enterprise D, and now this…’

‘And she’s been fine. I’m fairly certain Spot actually does have nine lives.’

‘That is simply an idiom about cats that pertains to their dexterity. She has one, small life.’

‘A healthy domestic cat can live around 25 years, these days,’ Deanna reminded him, although the cat drooling happily in his lap was definitely an old lady, now. It couldn’t be easy for Data to watch probably the first of many organic beings that he loved grow old, and threaten to leave him behind.

‘If they had succeeded in assimilating me,’ said Data, gently, his attention still fixed on the cat, ‘would they have made me do something to her?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Deanna, honestly. ‘But what I do know is, they didn’t succeed. You have the power to resist them.’

FEAR.

It hit her like a steel barred gate in the face.

FEAR.

She could sense him, these days, when he had the emotion chip on, but it was a very different experience to sensing anybody else. The way she always tried to explain it was this: Imagine a thousand people were trying to show you their depiction of a tree. There would be so many different trees – some with broad leaves, some bare, some with narrow spiked needles or fruit or flowers, some green, some blue, some black, some pink, and the depictions themselves would all be different – delicate watercolours, bold poster prints, charcoal sketches, abstract designs, all different and unique, but all discernible images of trees. Data’s would be the word ‘TREE’. Sometimes neatly typed, sometimes, scrawled, sometimes so far away she could barely see it, sometimes right up in front of her so that she couldn’t make out the message, only the fact that there was some sort of message to impart. He was still trying to depict a tree, but it was different. It needed to be read in a different way. It had been desperate and uncontrolled in those early days. Once she’d been kept awake for hours by the message SADSADSADSADSADSADSADSADSAD flashing repeatedly through her mind.

It had been thrumming through all of everybody else's unhappiness when she’d come back aboard the ship only a couple of days ago now, and found everything changed. FEAR. SHAME. GUILT. FEAR. SHAME. GUILT. But then, everyone was feeling those things. It was only as she discovered what had happened that those feelings had become sharpened, brightened. They smacked into her, especially with him in the same room.

FEAR.

SHAME.

GUILT.

‘There’s no point in worrying about the things they _might_ have made you do, but weren’t able,’ she told him, softly. She paused, hoping he would take her cue and run with it. When he didn’t, she carried on. ‘Did you want to talk about the things they _did_ make you do?’

SHAME.

GUILT.

‘They were unable to assimilate me fully.’ Data shook his head down at his cat. ‘I know some are suggesting that that might be down to some sort of merit on my part, a particular resilience, but I believe that it is merely due to them being far less used to performing the procedure the other way around. Grafting organic material onto a non organic life form… they used very different methods in their attempt to bring me under their influence. Very…’ He trailed off.

Deanna was about to say something when he spoke again, suddenly.

‘Locutus said I was obsolete. Of no use to them.’

LIED TO???

‘They changed their mind,’ said Deanna, concerned about this new, unsure feeling. ‘The code…’

‘Not just the code. There was more to it than that. She... They wanted to keep me.’

She.

They both knew he had said it. The Captain’s report had talked about this ‘she’.

NO NO NO

‘Did you want to talk about that, Data? Why they changed their mind, and wanted to keep you?’

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

He was blocking her out, now, panicking. She decided not to push that line.

‘I run a specific group for torture survivors. I think you should come along.’ That got his attention. He finally met her gaze, bewildered. ‘Data, that is what happened to you. You were captured, you were tortured for information; you survived. The first step is admitting that that is what happened. You know the Captain attends?’

‘Celtris III,’ murmured Data.

Deanna nodded. ‘Yes, that’s what brought him to it, but he’s come to the understanding that Locutus was also torture.’ She paused, keeping a hold of his gaze. ‘Torture takes many different forms. Physical, psychological, emotional… sexual…’

NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

His gaze dropped back down to the cat in his lap.

She said no more. She wasn’t sure that she could, at that moment. Beverly had mentioned the other injuries, and from the way Data held his self since the incident, her concern had grown over what had happened, but this confirmed her worst fears.

Out of all the things to do, out of all the people to do it to.

It hurt. It hurt _her_, and she knew it wasn’t about her in the least, it was about him, but it still hurt. She couldn’t help but wonder whether that was the point – whether at the heart of the Borg was a streak of sadistic viciousness. Locutus had felt so personal, so cruel, and now this. The weaponisation of, at the very least, sexual abuse. To take the ship’s ray of sweet innocence, and to do _that_…

‘You’re still Data, you’re still you.’ she managed, eventually, even though the broken, ravaged person sitting next to her did not, right now, seem entirely like her old Data. Even though the Captain had admitted even recently that he had never, ever felt entirely himself again after Locutus. ‘You just had a very, very, _very_ bad day.’

HOPE???? It was a blip, amongst the thrumming fear and shame, but it was there.

‘And we all still love you, very much.’

Something huge, and white, and wordless with pain and guilt hit her, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. 

‘Please leave.’ His voice was so small.

‘Of course.’ She got up. ‘I’m signing you off duty to recuperate for a week at the least, we can meet as many times as you want during that time. I’m sorry. I pushed you too hard too soon, it must still be so raw…’

‘I am not upset with you, Counsellor, I would just rather you did not… I am afraid that I have begun to cry, and with a missing eye, it is… messy.’

‘Oh.’ She paused. ‘Would you like a tissue?’

‘I shall require several.’

Thankfully, the replicator in Data’s quarters was still working. She got him a box of tissues and passed them to him.

‘I shall attend your group,’ he told her, keeping the stripped side of his face turned away from her as he dabbed at it with the tissues, ‘but it will have to be after they replace my eye, due to my concern over looking quite so much like a leaky machine.’

He shot a small glance at her, from the intact side of his face, and for a moment it was her old Data back, a cat in his lap, looking up at her for approval and confirmation that he had managed to say something funny.

She smiled at him. She wanted to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been my headcanon for a while that Deanna can read Data's emotions when they're on, but they come to her in a different way to other emotions - managing to be more literal but also more cryptic at the same time. So I had a play around with that here.


	4. Marco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picard heard him, that day. Picard can still hear him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: While it's not described explicitly, this chapter mentions the R Word that other characters have been skirting around, and has a brief flashback with a moment of probable sexual assault.
> 
> The song is the Cantique de Jean Racine by Faure. It's very pretty.

**Marco**

Picard remembered the Queen. Oh, _now_ he remembered the Queen. He remembered Locutus, always. He remembered seeing Data through Locutus’ eyes and thinking ‘obsolete’. 

He also had the vaguest, vaguest memory, possibly a dream he had once but possibly not. The question being asked: ‘what would be the most efficient way to hurt your little family?’ And the answer, unbidden: ‘break the android’.

Had it been a dream? Had been a false memory, placed in there by _her_, to make him worry that all of this was his fault? Both were possible. As was the suggestion that it had been real, a question asked of Locutus, with the answer snatched from Picard’s trapped mind.

He knew what had happened. He had known from the moment Data had reached out to him, through the collective. That simple message had told Picard so much – that Data was still alive, that he remained partially in control of his mind, at least enough to try to reach him, but also that he was now partially, permanently, theirs. His mind had been added to the collective, and, to Picard’s knowledge, once that had happened, one could never fully extract oneself. Picard had certainly never been able to.

He wondered now, as he tried to sleep, if Data knew that. That there was a good chance that the two of them would now be bonded against their will by this shared trauma, years apart, until the first of them – Picard, almost certainly – died.

He tried and failed to sleep, and thought about that whisper on the collective, that had told him ‘I am alive, I am frightened, I am being hurt, please help me’.

He could feel Data even now. So close. Still alive, still frightened, still hurt, still needing help.

It was a bad idea. It was a terrible idea. They were hugely weakened and very far away, but the Borg _were_ still out there, somewhere, a sort of distant static fuzz. So much more distant than Data, crackling with distress close by.

It was a terrible, dangerous idea.

But…

He reached out, a gentle whisper with his mind. A single word.

_Marco._

Nothing changed, for a while, and then the crackle faded a little, and a voice broke through, quiet and sad.

_Polo._

Oh. 

_Merde._

_Merde, en effet._

_We mustn’t use this to communicate, Data. I needed to see if we could, but we mustn’t. Not with them…_

_They are still out there._

_Yes. You feel them too._

_All the time. Does that ever stop?_

__He thought about the most tactful way to put it.

_It becomes… background noise. Like the ship’s engine. You forget it’s there._

_I never forget that the ship’s engine is there._

__The distress, which had calmed a little when they started “talking”, began to flare again.__

_Also, the ship’s engine is not going to return at some point in the future and take us again. The ship’s engine does not have two empty cells carved out for us, waiting… I know Locutus is still there. I feel him in there with you. Can you also feel… Him…?_

_Him? _Picard tried to stall. It was much, much fainter, they’d never actually made Him come about in reality, it was more that Picard could feel their plans for Him. An unnamed Queen’s Consort. The Borg they’d wanted to build out of what was left of Data._ Yes. Just. But Locutus existed for months. The Consort is just a… a blueprint. You managed to hold him back. You should be proud of that._

__”Proud” had been the wrong word to use. The distress spiked again.__

_There is no pride to be found in any of this. When they return – and they shall return – I fear that they will attempt to create him again, and will have learned and adapted from this time. This was merely a part of a learning curve. I know that you understand. I know that you have a similar fear._

__It was true. He’d never had a conversation like this with anyone through this medium before – it was the strangest thing. Oddly intimate. He never imagined that, of all the people he would end up linked to, able to speak without speaking, able to read one another’s wordless feelings, it would be Data. In a way, he felt almost glad, that there was finally someone who understood what it was like to come out the other side of assimilation, forever altered in subtle, unseen ways. Glad that it was a friend, with whom he now had a unique bond. But the gladness quickly gave way to horror and shame. This bond was at Data’s expense. Why had they chosen him? Had it just been the code? He knew it wasn’t just the code. “Break the android”. 

He knew a part of the point of Locutus had been to break the spirits of the others. He knew the effect that seeing Data turned into a Borg Consort would have. He knew they’d try it again if given the opportunity. He knew that they knew - that _she_ knew - how seeing him now, like this, would affect them all. “What would be the most efficient way to hurt your little family?”

_Yes, I understand. And what you’re going through is different to what I went through with Locutus. I don’t know where they learned to weaponise rape, but…_

__The sensation of distress was a metallic screech, biting on tin foil. It hurt behind his eyes and ears, and set his teeth on edge.__

_You believe that is what that was?? The others believe that? Is that why they keep looking at me with those expressions? They believe I am some unfortunate, unhappy victim?_

_Data…_

_It was not she who weaponised sex, but I. You know that. You _know_ the offer that I put serious consideration towards. You _know_ the decisions I made, in order to…_

_In order to escape. You were a prisoner. They tortured you, forced emotions and physical sensations upon you…_

_They were gifts! _

_Which you were not at liberty to refuse!_

_I was at liberty to remove the organic flesh. She said…_

__She said. With the Borg’s famously laissez-faire attitude to what their captives did with the rest of their lives. What was it they always said, again? ‘Resistance is fine with us, if that’s what you really want’? Picard didn’t put any of this into words, but projected back to Data his own knowledge of just how much importance the Borg always placed on free will, until he felt a balm of doubt creep into the guilty unhappiness. 

_I don’t believe for one moment that it was an option for you to just tear off their attempts at assimilating you and walk out of there, do you, Data? I don’t believe you were offered many options at all._

_I made the decision to go along with it._

_And if you hadn’t?_

__Here came the thrumming, screeching, tinfoil-on-teeth distress, again, and amongst it a new piece of information, like a cable, unintentionally yanked free and left to thrash and flail. Picard closed his eyes against the pain of it.__

_She made you think about Tasha._

_She asked when the last time had been. _his voice was barely a fuzz of feedback against the tooth-jolting pain._ That was unkind of her. I lost Tasha when I could not yet fully process the loss, but I always considered our intimacy to be something I could keep. Treasure. A moment of warmth and purity._

__This was when they were all out of their minds on the Tsiolkovsky virus, wasn’t it? Any of the consent to things that happened that day had been extremely questionable. Picard himself had been very glad that he’d managed not to do anything he’d regret. That was Data’s idea of a pure moment? The realization hit him sharply that his friend might never, in fact, have had a healthy relationship with sex and that this might have coloured his reaction as much as the Borg’s manipulation. He wordlessly allowed Data to see the thought. For his trouble, he was sent back a lifetime’s worth of being built with complex functions and programmes to sexually gratify multiple humanoid species and genders, but no sexual desire and no means of physically enjoying sex for oneself. The confusion over it, over what these functions were even for, if not to use them to fit in, to socialize, to please others. Deciding it best that, as long as the situation was safe and would not be hurtful to anybody, one should simply acquiesce politely when asked. Or told. Merde, sometimes, before the Queen, before Tasha, he had just been told to. There was a vivid memory, of smiling blandly while being pushed backwards into a table and having a hand shoved down the front of his pants, and Picard honestly couldn’t tell when it was from.

_Tasha asked nicely._

Picard had to shut his eyes, again. The pain was like looking into a star. 

_Our time together was not perfect, but it was gentle, and I held on to that. _She_ turned it into something… unclean._

_And you didn’t want that. You didn’t want to do any of that._

_I did what I had to do._

_You were a prisoner. Prisoners don’t have sex with their captors when their captors tell them to._

_I did._

__His whole mind buzzed with star-bright hurt. He only hoped that what Borg were left were too diminished and distant to sense any of this. __

_You didn’t, because you couldn’t consent. You played along, you used it, and humanity thanks you for doing that, because it saved us all, but it was not sex. Will you admit that, at least?_

__Data didn’t reply, but the bright, grating pain faded a little.__

_It’s all right if you don’t want to say it. But may I say it for you?_

__He waited for a confirmation. It took a while.__

_Yes._

_You were raped._

__The tooth jangling bright pain flared, and faded again.__

_You were told to have sex by your captor, your torturer, and the only path you could see out of your situation was to comply. And I still don’t know why she did it. She didn’t need to do it. She had plenty of other methods to extract information from you. I suspect part of it was because she could. She wanted to keep you, long term, as a consort. Again, because she believed that she could. Possibly it was revenge upon you for bringing me back from Locutus. Possibly it was revenge upon me for shedding Locutus. It’s your pain, and you own it, and you should be allowed to recover from it in your own time, on your own terms, but I believe it was designed to hurt me as well as you. It was designed to hurt all of us. Because we love you._

__The pain softened, and turned into something deeper, richer, sadder. No longer teeth on foil and a bright star, now it was a cool, dark ocean.__

_People keep telling me that, of late._

_Because it’s true, and you should know it._

_It keeps bringing me to tears, which makes a mess of this eye patch._

__Picard smiled a little.__

_We mustn’t use this to communicate between ourselves any more, _he told Data. _It’s too risky. They can hear. _The sadness shifted; became more immediate. Picard understood – doing this was easier than talking. It felt less real, whispering confessions to the voice in your head. This was the most Data had said since he was taken.__

_We can talk about this in person, if you want,_ he added.

_It feels… too much._

_I know. I understand._

__There was a pause.__

_What if, _added Data after a while_ we gave it no information?_

_That’s harder than you’d think._

_What if we filled it with sound? Music?_

__A blast of Philip Glass.__

_Like that. _

_Very nice. Go on, then._

__Another pause. The cool ocean of sadness was beginning to warm. There were pools of fondness in there, and gentle, tentative trepidation.__

_Perhaps you could do it?_

_You’re better at playing music in your head than I am, Data._

_…please? It would be… pleasantly distracting for me to feel that there is somebody with me, besides Them._

__He remembered that feeling. A few years ago, he’d been in that bewildered situation, but there’d been nobody out there but Them. He reached into his memory.__

_Verbe égal au trés Haut…_

__Data joined in with the tenor line, gladly.__

_Notre unique espérance, jour eternal, de la terre et des cieux. _  
_Nous rompons le silence,_  
_Divin Sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux.  
_Divin Sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux. __

__

__

_ __ _

_ __ _

__And the feeling surrounded him wordlessly, not verbal, but a wash of warmth.

\- I love you, too –


	5. Thank You For Swearing / Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before he goes home, Worf has one way to try to make things better.
> 
> After the funeral, two old friends look back on the past few years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes a short, post Nemesis coda.

**Thank You For Swearing**

It had been a week. It didn’t feel like it. It felt like twenty minutes and twenty years at the same time. Worf had busied himself, helping to fix up the parts of the ship that had been assimilated, helping to get the security team back to full capacity again, helping with the funerals. Security had suffered the most losses, after Engineering. Sometimes he’d bump into one of his team from the Defiant, and remember that he didn’t live or work on the Enterprise any more. This was his old family. His new family was waiting for him on Deep Space Nine, unscathed but concerned.

Transport back to his new home had been arranged for that evening. It was a little after noon. He still had time to help. He needed to help, as much as he could. His Enterprise family was still so bruised and broken by what had happened.

Deanna had talked to him about Survivor’s Guilt. She had looked strained and brittle, like a thin glass underneath a heavy rock. Sometimes it still took him by surprise how much he missed her.

He stepped out of the turbolift. He had decided that they still needed plenty of assistance in Engineering. He knew that Geordi had slept little that week. The Engineer spent what little free time he had taking the Borg’s torture table apart by hand, adamant that the only person who should help him to do it, if he wanted to, was Data. Worf knew that Geordi was paying penance, for not having been there. Whispering prayers with his hands, every bead of sweat and scraped finger a louse in the hairshirt.

Survivor’s Guilt.

Lieutenant Lo had expressed surprised dismay to him that Dr Crusher was refusing to receive the Blue Crest for saving her patients from the Borg, but Worf understood. He understood the looks in Commander Riker’s eyes, and the Captain’s. This was no victory. This was survival, without glory, without valour. It simply… was.

Worf turned a corner, and discovered an android in it.

‘Hello?’ He attempted.

‘No,’ managed Data, in a strained voice. 

He was still wrapping his arms around himself, trying to make himself look small, putting up unfamiliar barriers around himself. His arm face had skin on them once more, but the eye patch looked really jarring. He did not look “like a pirate” at all. He just looked like a really sad, scared little doll of a person with a broken eye.

‘You’re still on sick leave; you don’t need to be here.’

‘I know.’

Worf stopped himself from asking what Data was, in fact, doing there. They were close to Engineering. Data had an open invitation to help tear down the apparatus of his own torture there. And here he was, in a corner, panicking.

Worf leaned against the wall, with him. ‘You couldn’t go in.’

Data shook his head. ‘I saw the door. And… felt their hands, and…’ He turned his face away. ‘How am I to continue in this job if I cannot go anywhere near Engineering?’

‘You probably can’t. So, you’re going to have to make yourself go in to Engineering, some day. But I believe that you can do it. You’ve faced other challenges and overcome them.’ Worf had a think. ‘Remember when that man stole you and locked you up with the Mona Lisa and we all thought you were dead?’

‘Yes, that was awful, I required therapy for that once my emotion chip was installed.’

‘And remember when your psychotic brother kept committing genocide, so you had to kill him?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what happened with Lal...’

‘What, and I do not say this lightly, the fuck, Worf?’

‘You _do_ say it lightly, though. I enjoy that you curse, these days.’

‘Are you invoking my daughter's death in order to make me curse? Because you believe it to be amusing? I am already having an extremely bad week.’

‘You’re having an extremely bad life, Data. Things keep happening to you that are just… just terrible.’

‘And is this is supposed to make me feel better?’

‘No, this is supposed to make you feel angry. Is it working?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Good. I can work with anger.’ He nudged Data. ‘Want to smash something up?’

‘No.’ The android sighed. ‘Yes. I wanted to break the torture table, but…’

‘Let’s start with something less personal.’ He tried to take Data by the arm, but settled for merely gesturing the way when the android winced away automatically from his touch. ‘This way.'

The Holodeck programme was officially called ‘Worf Calisthenics 11’, but its unofficial name was ‘One Of My Annoying Friends Is Having A Bad Day’, and Worf had filled it with every different type of breakable he possibly could, and a series of implements to go on smashing sprees. There was a bit where one could drive an old fashioned motor vehicle down a long road filled with various empty containers, which would buckle and break with pleasingly loud noises. Deanna liked that one. He used to let her use this all the time. She still had access to it; that was the whole reason why it was still available on the new ship. Maybe she’d been using it earlier that day. 

There was a lot about it that he didn’t tell Data. He didn’t need to. He didn’t tell Data that he had unknowingly picked up the cricket bat that Tasha used to prefer, when they’d used the programme together all those years ago. He didn’t tell Data that sometimes in the early days, he would use this programme to let off steam over his irritation that he was outranked by some ridiculous, childish, blank faced android that everybody seemed to love but him. The opportune occasion had never come up for him to just casually say: “by the way, old friend, did you know I used to hate your guts?”

It probably didn’t ever need to be said. Now certainly wasn’t the time. Not when an android with the strength to punch holes through reinforced metal was working out whatever horrible, horrible things happened to him at the hands of the Borg by screaming and flattening shelf after shelf of china figurines – shelves and all – with a dead woman’s lucky cricket bat.

The past didn’t matter. He certainly didn’t resent Data any more. He liked him. He hoped more repressed rage was being dealt with during this smashing spree than just what had happened in Engineering. He’d gift Data access to this programme as well, he’d decided. Data deserved that.

The smashing spree went on for almost an hour, before, like all the programme’s users, Data ran out of impetus and slumped amongst a sea of smashed glass, wood, porcelain, metal and, somehow, concrete.

‘Better?’ asked Worf.

‘Not particularly, no.’

‘Then,’ said Worf, ‘keep using it until you _do_ feel better.’

‘And if I never feel better?’

‘Then smash things for the sake of smashing them.’ Worf crouched down, next to him. ‘This will take as long as it takes. I know they’re saying you’re trying to find a way to switch off your emotions again, but you have a right to them. You have a right to be angry, and you have a right to feel panicked when you see the door to Engineering.’

‘What about shame?’ asked Data, quietly. ‘What about guilt?’

‘Oh. No. You have no right to feel those over what happened last week.’

‘How so?’

‘Because all of the shame rests with your perpetrators. If you take responsibility for any of that shame, you relieve them of some of it, and that’s just stupid.’ 

Data nodded, blankly, more out of politeness than agreement.

‘Thank you for this,’ he said, eventually.

‘Thank you for swearing so much. It was hilarious.’

‘Worf.’

‘I can teach you some really good Klingon curses, if you like.’

‘Please.’

**Coda**

Bad day. Terrible day. Everything was over and nothing was over. You’re supposed to feel closure at the end of a funeral, but all Picard felt was emptiness. That voice, that friendly voice on the awful open channel of Borg consciousness that they’d been forced into together and kept swearing they wouldn’t chat to one another on, only to keep sending one another little thoughts and nudges and tunes on it anyway, was gone again. He hated how empty it all felt.

‘Did he ever feel better?’

It was Worf, by his side.

‘I know you had that… Borg connection, after what they did to both of you,’ Worf clarified. ‘I felt guilty, leaving you all so soon after that. He seemed in a bad way.’

‘He was. But, he did feel better, in time. Not completely. One never does, after the Borg. Not ever. Took him months to be able to work in Engineering, he kept trying to go in too early. Have you ever tried talking down an android having a full-blown panic attack? Because I have.’ Picard cast his mind back to the lows. ‘He’d have bad periods. Some really bad ones. Sometimes we’d all feel like we were back to square one. Had to sign him off a few times, over the years. We learned to see the signs, intervene early. We coped. _He_ coped.’ Picard paused. ‘I know about your holodeck programme, with all the breakables. That did come in handy quite often, so thank you for that.’

Worf smiled, sadly. ‘Did he still curse a lot? I used to like that.’

Picard managed his first proper smile in some time. ‘When his emotions were running, that android had the filthiest mouth. One time, his voice box got damaged for three weeks.’

‘And?’ asked Worf, already grinning with anticipation.

‘And so he started swearing in sign language.’

Worf roared with laughter, and Picard laughed too, until he cried.


End file.
